He applied to Germany and was rejected due to "missing requirements". No official statement was given what requirements exactly were missing. Probably, because you have to be on german ground (or very near) to apply. The application itself is declared confidential due to privacy reasons.

Essentially, our government does not want Snowden to enter Germany.

So, it's obvious that it's not politically convenient for Germany (or most other western countries) to grant Snowden asylum, even if they wanted to.

But legally, he doesn't have a very clear-cut case: The 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees which is the legal framework for asylum, defines the criteria as having a well-founded fear of persecution because of one's race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group.

The only category that might fit is "political opinion", but holding a certain political opinion is not a license to commit a crime (which, unambiguously, Snowden is guilty of), especially when laws against the exact same activity is on the books in the countries he's applying to.

Has it not been for the much too heavy-handed treatment of Manning, he couldn't even claim fear of prosecution: getting a fair trial in a court of law isn't prosecution.

Maybe he has a prosecution complex? Are you sure you don't mean prostitution? Procrastination? Prostate exam?

Getting a fair trial in court most certainly involves prosecution:

prosecution n. 1) in criminal law, the government attorney charging and trying the case against a person accused of a crime. 2) a common term for the government's side in a criminal case, as in "the prosecution will present five witnesses" or "the prosecution rests" (completed its case). (See: prosecute, prosecutor)

full url is http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/germany-should-h...

please don't use url obfuscators on hn.

Germany was in on the spying act itself. Hypocrites to suggest they have some type of moral superiority over the US.

Are there any countries that don't spy on people?

All countries spy on their citizens. The real questions are twofold: (1) how reliable is the information that the political decision makers obtain from spying, and (2) how democratic and transparent are the spying operations, how much control do the citizens have over the spying operations.

NSA-like spying is probably the most reliable in history, but how the information gets transformed on the way to decision makers, and what democratic control we have probably leaves a lot to be desired and must improve. Snowden is a hero because his actions have given us incentive and data to improve the world of secret services.